I played through most of the first and third modules of the UN Refugee Agency game, "Against All Odds" and was not very impressed. I did not really feel sympathetic towards my character in the game. If anything, the limited nature of the gameplay made me appreciate the predicament less than before. The only part that was vaguely powerful to me would be the first part of the first module, where you must lie to not be beaten and thrown in jail, otherwise, the rest of the game seemed to trivialize a large portion of the "difficult decisions" you were forced to make. As much as this serious game was trying to let me "experience what it is like to be a refugee," I don't think that experience was conveyed to me very well.
One of the things I found very interesting was the emergence of in-game racism towards female dwarves in WoW. This racist attitude stemmed from the frequent choice of female dwarf for Chinese gold farmers, but apparently now has become a real in-game racism, where players will be harassed and greifed if they inadvertently choose to be a female dwarf. It is also interesting to note that gold farmers of any nationality are referred to as "Chinese gold farmers" by many players.
Do you think that racism could originate in a videogame without influence of racism against a culture outside of the game? For example, could an online community just begin to hate elves because they are different from other races?
I don't know if it could get that extreme, but I know that certain stereotypes can be created. For example, when I started playing World of Warcraft, I played on a PVP server. Once I started getting into contested areas where the horde could kill me, I started to think that Tauren and Blood Elves were assholes because they were the ones who killed me the most. In addition, because the two factions aren't able to communicate with each other, there's already a large separation between the two groups, making it easier for these thoughts to manifest.
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